Zorro III USB - Deneb

[platon42]

Flashlab wrote:
Any news on this puppy? Seeing it's almost Christmas and all...;-)

Well, I have one ;-) Joking aside, Michael is in the last stages of verifying the hardware for series production, and I'm also preparing some goodies such as a very special class driver which will only be available for the Deneb (which I finished a first working version yesterday ).

I case you missed it, in this thread http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2442&page=23 there's an image of the (nearly final) pre-series board.

As giving time frames is a very difficult thing in the Amiga business, I'd rather not give an expected date of availabilty.

Merry xmas though and best regards

Chris Hodges

[platon42]

The card is currently in production. Most parts have arrived, PCBs are a bit late unfortunately. Software is being finished. Fast Zorro IV is also supported.

[platon42]

motorollin wrote:
Can we pre-order?

You're kidding, right? Pre-ordering has a long track record of negative experiences in the Amiga hardware and software history. And no, no T-shirt coupons either.

[platon42]

Argus wrote:
The A4000T is different because it implements the A4091 on the m/b and there is an additional busmastering conflict as a result, which prevents use of the Deneb whatsoever in DMA mode (and maybe even PIO mode, though I'm not certain).  Since all A4000Ts also have Rev.11, even if you don't use the on-board SCSI controller, they again allow only one ZIII busmaster (e.g. a Deneb, Fastlane, etc.).  So again I think what he's saying is if you have more than one DMA ZIII card in an A4000T w/Rev.11 (really this is limited to either a Fastlane or Deneb) you'd have to run the Deneb in PIO mode and let the Fastlane run in DMA mode.

.....My apologies to Michael if I got this wrong.

You can always use the Deneb in PIO mode, regardless of Buster revisions or busmastering cards or secondary channel a4091 (A4000T).

The A4091 is really broken, regardless as if implemented as Zorro III card or on A4000T. And installing the Deneb in an A4000T and actually using the onboard SCSI can cause hangups with other DMA cards, such as the Deneb. The milage will vary regarding the probability and also largely depends on the CPU card used (if I'm not mistaken).

On my current A4000T board, using the DMA driver causes an instant lockup. Unfortunately.

[platon42]

mr_silicon wrote:
Any update on the development status of the Deneb?

Michael already commented on the hardware side, so a short update from the software side:

Luciferin has reached release candidate state (yeah, even the updated docs). Bootloader development for the Deneb is finished, and so is the software for the virtual installation disk. It also comes with a small boot intro (Algor users might notice a slight similarity). As a new feature, the Debeb can boot into MorphOS PUP directly from flashrom.

The Deneb USB 2.0 driver has gone into final testing and optimization stages. Poseidon V4.0 has been feature frozen (and a few features have been added aswell :-P ).

Edit: And there is a tool that can be used for mapping the clockport to a fake zorro card carrying clockports (for example the X-Surf), so that you can use clockport cards with drivers not knowing the new Deneb card.

So, everything is getting ready for shipment soon ;-)

So long.

[platon42]

sandpiper wrote:

It's more the cheap soundcards (no need to pay £50 for a Toccata)

Interesting. I see in the press release that there is a new audio class for AHI. I wonder if it would be possible to play mp3s without loading the cpu?
 

While the USB Audio does provide stream types for that kind of playback, I'm pretty sure you won't get your hands on a USB soundcard that provides for this, as 99,9% of the usb soundcards are pure PCM devices for already decoded data. So you unfortunately still have the CPU load for decoding -- the same (actually a bit less due to Zorro III access) as with other Zorro soundcards without DSP or mp3 hardware decoder.

[platon42]

sandpiper wrote:
Couple of questions...

1. I ordered a Deneb for my A3000. How much power can be supplied to the Deneb from the ZIII bus? Is it safe to power mice, keyboards, thumb drives without external power?

2. I have a Subway in an A2500/060. I am quite happy with it. Would there be any advantages in upgrading to Deneb? From reading available information it looks like fast USB 2 speeds aren't possible in ZII space.

1. The A3000 usually supplies 2.0A per Zorro slot AFAIR -- enough for powering three bus powered devices at 500mA each.

2. Speed. The Deneb is *a lot* faster (> 2 MB/sec for Zorro II) than the Subway (you get more data per CPU cycle :-) ). Also, no CPU consumption when idle (or waiting interrupt transfers). The Deneb supports realtime ISO transfers and therefore allows USB Audio and a new Webcam driver to work. You also get the 4MB of flashrom ;-) These are the main benefits.

[platon42]

Boot_WB wrote:

I'd be interested to know what the transfer speed from USB Ethernet to a Deneb mounted hard drive would be. Does it bypass Amiga memory completely? Can it achieve 100Mb/s ethernet transfer speeds? Are USB gigabit lan adapters supported?

TCPSpeed between my Amiga (060, PIO mode) and Pegasos 2 with MiamiDx on both machines: 800KB/sec in both directions with ASIX Ethernet adapter for 20 EUR.

The CPU is the bottleneck here. I haven't tried other TCP/IP stacks than MiamiDX, which is said to be much slower than other stacks. For USB packet generation, the ethernet frame itself needs to be assembled in memory first before being sent to the USB card. SANA2/Poseidon API lacks here a bit regarding buffer assembly inside the RAM of the controller. There are a few Gigabit Adapters with ASIX Chipsets aswell, but you won't get much over 10MBit/sec speed, and not even close to what is achievable with Gigabit controllers. Of course.

[platon42]

Boot_WB wrote:
@Platon42

Chris, just wondering about the following scenario:

I'm intending to have a USB>NIC adapter, and a USB>SATA adapter attached to the Deneb when it arrives.

If I'm downloading a large file from the internet, onto the SATA drive, what will be the limiting factor on the download speeds?

Will the transfer be via zorro and memory:

NIC > Deneb > Zorro bus > memory followed by Memory > Zorro bus > Deneb > SATA ?

or will the transfers be direct between the two devices?

NIC > Deneb > SATA ?

I do not pretend to have your and Michael's level of expertise, but as this will affect transfer speeds in this situation, I'm curious to know.

The transfer will go like this:

NIC > Deneb Driver (Zorro to memory) > Poseidon Library > ethernet.class (frame unwrapping, memory to memory) > TCP/IP stack (PPPoE > TCP Decoding (memory to memory)) > Application (possibly buffering) > Filesystem (possibly buffering) > usbscsi.device > Poseidon Library > Deneb Driver (memory to Zorro) > SATA

There is no way I could tell the Application that the data from the NIC should go back to the SATA device, especially because the file system only knows where to write it and the TCP/IP stack needs to decode the ethernet frames (and also doing those expensive 1-complement CRC checksums).

In your example the TCP/IP stack would be the limiting factor.